SOUP

Out today in the clear blue air chainsawing firewood because we fell behind in our stockpile of stove-sized stuff owing to the snow and the hordes of 5 year-old and twin-like beings that for the past few days have invaded our house and devoured our time like the cutest chronovores in the world, which was no problem really, except that it gets cold when the fire goes out.

So today the kids were across the Lake with other relatives, Echo was in Kyoto and I was out there in the snow shoveling off the firewood tarp so I could peel it back and get to work, which I did and made a goodly pile of right-size chunks, enough for a week or so.

By then it was afternoon, so I went into the snowclad garden where the weight of the white stuff had crushed a couple of my raised bed covers; I fixed them and then uncovered another undamaged bed to get some beautiful green crisp mizuna (which I highly recommend for your winter garden) to use in the onion garlic pepper rice tomato pumpkin pinto bean chick pea soup I was making for late lunch.

When I had cut a good big handful, the mizuna stems cold and strong in the hand, I stood and realized that from there, with the leaves of the trees now gone, in the winter-cleared air I could see the Prussian blue lake and above it, with no division below, the snowy peak of Mt. Ibuki beyond the far shore, above that an edgeless swath of blue-gray and above that a swath of rose pink that faded imperceptibly into the full blue sky capped by half a moon like sun through an opening in a temple dome.

All that went into the soup too.